


Elias

by angelaiswriting



Series: Lyudmyla [1]
Category: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (Video Games)
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Oral Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Unsafe Sex, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:08:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27192902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelaiswriting/pseuds/angelaiswriting
Summary: In which Lyudmyla officially meets Elias and realizes that opening up to him is not as difficult as it has always felt with everyone else.
Relationships: Elias "Blitz" Kötz/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Lyudmyla [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985062
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3





	Elias

**Author's Note:**

> Translations: tesoro (Italian) = darling // lyubimaya (Russian) = love
> 
> Finally posting this here as well.

Despite it being ten in the morning, the Base was quiet when Lyudmyla left debriefing. It had been an easy mission, albeit exhausting — go in, rescue the hostages while simultaneously retrieving some intel, then take everyone to safety. Nothing she had never done before. _Nothing compared to what we’re used to_ , Volkov would have said, back in Stepnoy. And yet, after having been awake for longer than she could remember, she couldn’t wait to hit the shower and then her bed.

“I’m meeting up with Sanya after lunch,” Timur said, throwing an arm around her shoulders and hissing when the movement didn’t sit well with his sore muscles.

She snorted before he had the chance to continue. “You’re going to lunch?” she asked, surprised, head whipping to the side so fast she almost got whiplash. Glaz looked just as tired as she and for a moment, she wished she could ease his exhaustion like he always lifted her spirits.

“You’re not?”

“I’m going to sleep for _at least_ two days straight, Tima,” she laughed and a moment later, before he could say anything, she stood up on her toes and left a kiss on his stubbled cheek. “So tell Sanya and the guys I say hi and that I’ll see them again when I don’t feel like a zombie anymore, yes?”

He smiled and for a moment he stood there, just staring at her, one arm still around her shoulders. If asked, she wouldn’t be able to tell with complete certainty who was keeping the other standing when all they could think of was sitting — or better yet, _lying_ — down and not getting up for as long as they could manage. But then he pulled her in for a quick good-bye hug before stepping away. “I’ll check up on you tonight, see if you’re awake enough to grab a bite at that new place you wanted to check out,” he said before snickering. “Unless Dominic steals you again, that is!”

He was gone before she could flip him off — jokingly, that is. Everything was light and easy between them, and between her and Dominic as well. She had bonded with the other operators back at the base in Stepnoy, when she had been a Spetsnaz agent and nothing more, and with some of her new colleagues as well, of course, but none of those people had ever felt like home, not like Tima and Dom did. They had her back and she had theirs and with Dominic most of all, it was like being children again, sneaking around with your dearest friend and causing mischief behind everyone’s back.

When she unlocked the door to her dorm room, twenty minutes or so later, there was a surprise waiting for her on her bed.

“Christ, _Schatzi_ , you look like absolute _shit_!”

Caught by surprise by his words, Lyudmyla stopped in her tracks, magnetic card still in one hand as she stood in the doorframe. Then, when she came back to the present moment, something halfway between a chuckle and a sigh left her lips. “Thanks, _love_. It’s good to see you, too.”

The door closed behind her back with the soft _click_ of the lock going back into place, and the weight of the mission and of the relief of being back home crashed down on her shoulders all at once. No more running around for a few weeks now; no more aiming at someone hundreds of yards away through the gunsight of her rifle; no more Lion to stand day and night. A sob almost bubbled up in her throat when the realization that she could now rest dawned down on her — sleep, a stroll around Hereford’s grounds, a jog through the park, fun times with her friends…

“I drew you a bath.”

“How the fuck did you get in here?” It was a halfhearted complaint, for she truly didn’t mind the man sneaking into her dorm. She spotted her baggage on the dresser to her right and realized that he was probably the one who had brought it there after she had forgotten to. For a split second, she contemplated taking out her dirty clothes to bring them to the laundry room but decided not to.

Drained as she was, she felt like she was moving in slow-motion, movements and sounds slowed down around her now that she was back to safety and had the time and space to just let go of everything. So, when Dominic grabbed her by her shoulders, she jolted in place, a gasp leaving her lips at that unexpected gesture.

“Are you okay?” was what he asked, eyebrows knitted together and head slightly tilted to the side as he stared at her — almost _through_ her, for he knew she had a habit of keeping how she truly felt a goddamn secret. He waited for her reply to come but in vain. “Go take that bath before the water gets cold.”

“A shower would be quicker,” she complained as he steered her in the direction of the bathroom, hands on her shoulders.

He parroted her once before he tsked her. “Should’ve texted me that that was the plan. Hop into the tub, I’ll unpack your stuff.”

Exhausted or not, there was no complaining, not when Dominic set his mind on something. So, when he left her alone and the door ajar, she slowly stripped herself of the uniform she was still wearing and set first one foot and then the other into the warm water. She wondered how long ago he had drawn her that bath, but the thought came and went, for her body seemed to melt in the welcoming warmth that enveloped her the more she sank into it.

Allowing herself to relax for the first time in weeks, she let her head fall back and her eyes close. Not a sound reached the quiet confines of the bathroom but Dom’s rummaging silently through her things. She heard him move around her room, putting away some of the things she had brought back, before soft music started playing through the speakers of her TV.

She chuckled. He had a way of doing things… and she loved it — loved how caring and sweet this soldier was, even when she gave him a hard time to make up for the fact that _he_ gave _her_ a hard time. He had been just a text away for endless days, always ready to send back some stupid reply at whatever ungodly hour she managed to send a few words his way, and now that she was back, it was almost weird to realize that he had never changed, not even when she was battered blue and purple and could still feel the muzzle of that gun kissing her left temple.

At some point during her slow fall into deep relaxation, he pushed the door and her eyes shot open, stared at the anthracite gray of the wall tiles. Something about taking her dirty laundry away, and even though there was a _Please, stay with me_ burning the tip of her tongue, she let him go.

There was silence for the first time in forever, then, the volume of the music so soft her ears could easily bypass it. She could hear her own breathing, though, slow and steady, and underneath that, the regular beating of her heart.

Russian operations had been worse, she tried to convince herself — and Spetsnaz training topped it all. The pain, the exhaustion, the _humiliation_ … Nothing could compare and yet, she had been this close to leaving this world and although it had been just one of many, _many_ times, she had seen Mira this time. Mira and that sweet smile of hers — and how she hadn’t seen her in forever as Lyuda always did anything in her power to stay away from Nizhny Novgorod and the house she had once lived in.

Ten-year-old Mira, smiling up at her big sister Lyuda as she got ready to leave with a uniform in her only luggage. Ten-year-old Mira and that _Will you come home for Christmas?_ of hers that sometimes still plagued her, ten years after those words had been uttered. She had promised she would, but then her mother had let one of her usual malicious words leave her mouth a couple of weeks later and she had thrown the idea to the wind. She hadn’t come back for Christmas, nor to check up on her sister after the accident that took her sight away, and all because even the army had felt better than going back home.

Had she died seven days ago, she would have done so with guilt and remorse in her heart, and that wasn’t how she planned to leave this world. Not with Miroslava’s chocolate eyes full of hope staring at a Lyudmyla that would never be back.

Her back slid down along the wall of the tub and before she could realize it, her head was underwater, her eyes closed and her breath caught in her throat. She didn’t know what it was about this time, why it had struck her so much. Why she couldn’t shake off the cold kiss of a gun against her temple. She hadn’t run a real risk, she knew Timur had her back — Timur, and how good of a sniper he was. _She_ had volunteered to act as a bait; she had found herself kneeling on the dusty ground because of a plan _she_ had helped come up with. She had been in that position many a time, and she could see no reason why this one accident should take the crown.

“Lyuda?”

The sound of Dominic’s voice was muffled and almost distorted by the water, but it still managed to startle her, and as she jolted up to sitting and water sloshed out of the tub, she found herself gasping for air.

“What happened in Nairobi?”

She turned to look at him, and it still felt like moving underwater. Then, when she put him into focus, something seemed to click and the world went back to its usual speed — although a bit too quick when all she wanted to do was make up for lost time. “What?”

“I met Twitch in the laundry room when I dropped your things off,” he started, voice slow and measured. She could read it in his eyes — that accusation of sorts, and the more she stared, the more it seemed to make the droplets of water on her upper body burn her skin. “She said something about fearing Glazkov not being able to take _you_ out of there in time.”

It was one thing to know she had a mother, back in Russia, that despised her job — hers, her ex-husband’s, her only living son’s — and that wanted another life for her, one that didn’t suit her, one that would never _fit_ her. And it was another to have a hardened soldier stand in front of her, with his arms crossed against his chest and his eyes trying to burn the truth out of her — out of her reckless mind.

“Everything was under control,” she heard herself say with that confidence so typical of her. _Nothing_ had been under control, not with Lion fearing for the hostages’ lives when there was nothing to fear, not yet. But she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud, not when she was sure her friend had already grasped part of the truth.

He didn’t say anything for a long minute and as he stood there, almost towering over her despite being at the other end of the bathroom, Lyudmyla felt small and insignificant under that knowing gaze of his. Without uttering a word, he took a towel from a cabinet and laid it down on the floor next to her. “You know you don’t have to close off,” he said eventually. His hand was making the skin of her shoulder burn, or so was the sensation she felt, and that was what she focused on as she tried her best to avoid his gaze. “Not with me, there’s no need to. I’m always here for you if you need me.”

“I know,” but it was soft, _faint_ , and she wondered if he had heard her before he left the room and a fresh change of clothes waiting for her on the counter by the sink.

When she walked back into her bedroom some time later, after she successfully scrubbed all the grime off her skin and out of her hair, she found Dominic waiting for her on her bed as he scrolled intently through Netflix in search of a title that could catch his attention. She didn’t say a word for long, endless minutes, but she knew he had heard her, that he knew she was right there. 

She didn’t exactly know why she hadn’t told him about that stupid plan as soon as she had had time to, and the only explanation she could come up with was that causing him to worry was truly the very last thing she wanted. And even more so when he was thousands of miles away, with more time on his hands than he knew how to occupy it all.

“It was the only sensible thing to do at that moment.” There was no need to justify herself, and surely not to someone who did her exact same job. Running risks was part of the job and it was foolish to think that nothing bad would ever happen — they handled real weapons, after all, not some cheap toys for children. “It had to be done if we wanted to collect the information RAINBOW wanted.”

Dominic shrugged his shoulders, his eyes still fixed on the TV screen hanging on the wall opposite her bed. “I have no doubt about that.” Just then, he seemed to settle on a title and he let the remote drop to his side as his head turned in her direction. “And I’m not here to judge whatever decision you and the others made back there. I want to know how you’re feeling, that’s all.”

He stretched his right hand out in her direction and she hesitated for a heartbeat or two before she walked away from the wall she had been leaning against. His hand was warm in hers, the skin of his palm roughened by callouses. It was a comforting touch and while she wasn’t a fan of touching people or of being touched, she realized now just how much she had missed being this close to him.

“You don’t have to say shit if you don’t want to,” he warned her, moving up on the bed so that he was sitting back against her pillows and she could cuddle against his side. “But if you do decide to talk about it, I don’t want to hear bullshit. It’s either the truth or nothing at all.”

It took her a while to move her head against his shoulder and stare up at him. She had been hardened by the military life she had been thrown into long before she had enlisted, and the prospect of opening up to someone physically pained her at times. There was also no lying to Dominic: he always somehow managed to see right through her shit and call her out on it.

“It isn’t for the threat itself,” she eventually sighed in defeat, eyes locking with his.

“You had your head underwater, _Schatzi_ …”

She shook her head before repeating that _It isn’t for the threat itself_ , with more conviction this time. “I have a sister, Mira, living back in Russia with my mother. I don’t know why I never talk about her,” she said when a look at his expression made her feel guilty for never telling him about her. Dominic was probably the one that knew her best, better than anyone else in the world, and although he might think he knew her better than the back of his hand, there were still secrets she had never disclosed, not even to him.

“Did you think of her?”

She shrugged. “I’ve been unjust with her, and never once made up for it. I haven’t seen her in almost ten years and I… miss her, I think.” A sigh, then, and after that, a long moment of silence.

He was playing with her still-damp hair and instead of playfully complaining about her getting his shirt wet, his lips remained sealed. “Why don’t you go back and visit her, then?” He frowned, and she could read his confusion in his eyes clearer than it was in his voice. “I could come with.”

Her head tilted back; it almost slid off his shoulder in her attempt to look at the ceiling instead of the possible new wave of accusation that might flash across his features. “She had an accident, ten years ago. I was eighteen and had just joined the army. It was my first time truly away from home, among people that didn’t know who the hell I was. Well, the majority of them, at least. My mother never wanted for me to truly enlist, and even more so after what happened to Vasya and Serzh, I told you all about this already. Mira had made me promise to go back for Christmas, but I couldn’t make it because of training, you know how these things are. It was October. I got a call from my mother in March, and I ignored it. Around the end of May, my dad visits my unit for military reasons and he tells me Mira’s had an accident, that she’s in a coma and has been for three months.”

“Her being in a coma wasn’t your fault, though.”

“No, but never visiting was. Never calling for the first two years, was. Running away from the idea of going back just to keep my pride intact, was, as well. There was nothing I could do, but I sure as hell could’ve _done something_.” She huffed, and then turned onto her back to rub her face with impatient hands. “I just wanted to run away. Away from my mother and everything Nizhny Novgorod, but I ended up being trapped in this mess anyway. We talk over the phone every once in a while but…”

“You’ve been at gunpoint in the past, and you’ve never thought of her that I know of. Why this sudden crisis?”

“I got a text in Nairobi,” she confessed. “My baby sister is inviting me to her wedding next year and while she knows I’m busy and most likely won’t be able to make it to her engagement party, she’s still inviting me over when I’m free to meet her fiancé and celebrate together.”

“And?”

“‘And’ what?”

“That’s not a bad thing. You should accept the invitation, meet your future brother-in-law, and enjoy your time with her. We could die at any given moment when we’re on a mission, so why spend so much time on spilled milk?”

She frowned and gaped at him for a moment, brain incapable of coming up with words. It sounded so easy on Dominic’s lips — fly back home, hug your sister, possibly apologize for being a terrified cunt ten years ago, and then go on with your life. Easy peasy. Right?

“You’re still in contact, ain’t you?” His voice brought her back to the present moment and when she moved her gaze to focus on him again, she found him staring at her with a smile and the remote back in his hand. “What do you fear? Repercussions? I’m sure she knows how you feel, or at least has an idea of it — you’re not that hard to read once one gets to know you. It’s your sister: she wouldn’t invite you to her wedding if she didn’t want you there.”

That made sense, and the more she turned that thought around in her mind, the more sense it made. “I’m not in the mood to talk about this now. Put on that movie.”

He didn’t move for a long minute, and she could feel his burning gaze on the side of her face as she sat back against her pillows, mirroring his position, and stared at the TV in front of her. In the silence of the room, she could hear his regular breathing — and then something else, something in the air between them that she couldn’t put her finger on and name, but it was that feeling that always overcame her when she closed herself off and he didn’t like it.

“Marius is throwing a party for his birthday on Saturday,” Dominic said after a while, some time into the film he had chosen and not long before she finally crashed out from exhaustion. “You’re invited as my plus one and you can’t say no. Consider it training for your sister’s invitations.”

*

_It’s gonna be just us_ — that’s what Dominic had said, four days ago. It had taken him a lot of convincing and that prospect was what had bought her. She was on good terms with almost every one of her RAINBOW colleagues, but she wasn’t one to mingle too much. She felt better off in small groups, just a few people at a time, nothing too overwhelming; she wasn’t one for crowds. So when she walked into the bar, fully expecting to find the German team and maybe a few other operators, she found herself being a deer caught in headlights, taken aback by the amount of people Jäger must know and that he had invited to his party of sorts.

“I was starting to think you had blown me off!” Dominic elbowed his way through the people present and pulled her into a side hug, a bottle of beer in the hand that wasn’t squeezing her shoulder. A huge grin on his face, his eyes seemed to twinkle under the slightly-dimmed lights of the place.

“And I thought it would be ‘just us’,” she groaned back, grabbing a hold of his beer to steal a sip. Beer wasn’t her favorite, but so wasn’t water, and she knew how to settle for the lesser evil.

He shrugged, guilt burning bright in his amused expression. “Oh, c’mon, babe! You’ve been away for endless days,” he slurred, head bowing down closer to her just so that he could look at her from underneath his lashes, in that childish way of trying and getting things done his way that he never missed a chance to sport. “Left poor me to live with the boredom of the Base _alone_ , when almost everybody was away. Grant me this one?”

It was impossible to stay impassible when Dom was around. Whether you wanted it or not, he always managed to find a way to put a smile on your face. And more than that, it truly warmed her heart, the way he always tried with her — to lift her spirits, to take her out of her shell, to give everyone he cared about a good time… So she smiled. Instead of groaning or rolling her eyes — which she tried to do for a moment, there was no denying that —, she gave him a lopsided grin before caving in. “I’ll leave at some point, though. I’m still exhausted, my body is a whole ache.”

“None of that bullshit,” he shook his head as he led her to the side of the room Marius had rented for the night. “I know you had a Thai massage earlier today.”

She snorted at that and for good measure, she gave him a look, just before being greeted by the birthday boy himself. “I’ll book an appointment for you, then. I’m sure Tachanka will be more than happy to practice his rough skills on someone new. I’ll let you decide how Thai that massage is.”

Then, before he had the chance to process the fact that her masseur was a giant of a man or even just to say a word, Marius pulled her into a tight hug and she wished him a hundred more of these days. They had never truly bonded — they had never been assigned on a mission together, and those were the occasions she used to get to know people better. If she didn’t see how they fought and worked, then she didn’t have the chance to form an impression about someone. And aside from Dom, she had never worked with the Germans.

“I’m glad you could make it!” Marius had taken her towards a booth and had made her sit, and when her friend joined them with a new beer for her, she found herself being squished between the latter and Blitz. “This motherfucker’s always talking about you and how good of a drinking partner you are, but he never shared before.”

She chuckled. “Yeah, and it’s usually not beer,” she smirked, taking a sip from her bottle.

Ten minutes into the party, and she had already been introduced to Marius’ civil British friends and to some of the RAINBOW operators she didn’t know that well, Elias Kötz included. She had seen him around already, and for obvious reasons, just as she knew his codename was Blitz. And that he was the freak with the freaky shield she had always wanted to see in action but never had the chance to.

He seemed like a nice man, and while Dominic never downplayed anyone, he had never portrayed his friend as such a fun person. He knew more jokes than she could recall and some time later, deeper into the drinking games, when the alcohol started making her forget her English, she even found out he spoke Russian — and that he was very good at it.

“What part of Russia have you been to?” she found herself asking at some point, the party now completely forgotten just as she was unaware of Dominic staring at her — and at his friend and colleague — with a smirk on his face from some meters away. “I can’t pinpoint your accent.”

Blitz — _Elias_ , he had insisted for her to call him by his name — seemed to blush just before he brought his beer to his lips to hide that satisfied smile of his. “I’ve never been,” he shrugged. “I had a girlfriend during my second year of high school, she was from Ekaterinburg. We ended up breaking up during summer break, but I found some people that could help me with the language and I didn’t say no to that chance. I knew it would be useful one day.”

And maybe it was the vodka in her system — and in his as well — but she found that blood flowed quickly to her cheeks under the smile he sent her way. He was a pretty sight, for sore eyes and all that, and she wasn’t one to be sheepish around men, whether she was drinking or not. Hell, there had been two guys back in Stepnoy with which she had done things that would make her own father’s face turn beetroot red! This man flirting — or trying to — with her shouldn’t be anything new. Nonetheless, she found herself staring down at the table, stomach squeezing and fingertips tingling.

“Useful, you say?” The right corner of her lips turned upward into an almost-trembling smirk as she tried her best not to chuckle. “Did you have any chance with some Russian these days?”

He let out a long _ehh_ and he shrugged his shoulders, eyes gazing up at the ceiling as his own smirk risked giving its place to full laughter. “There’s this one woman, _very_ pretty. She’s my homie’s homie apparently. As Marius said, Dom doesn’t share much, but I’m sure you’ve seen her around Hereford. On the short side, shoulder-length hair, doesn’t open up much, amazing shooter on the long distance…”

At those words, and at the badly-contained amusement in his expression, she couldn’t help but laugh — and almost choke on her shot. She had lost count of how many pickles and how many drinks she had had by now, but it didn’t matter, not when she was feeling that nice warmth inside. “First off, she’s _not_ on the ‘short side,’ try again.” She nudged his thigh with her knee and they both chuckled, by now badly sitting up straight on the leather bench of the booth. “Second off, she _does_ open up… with those she feels comfortable around.”

He chuckled at her grin, and then at the way she chomped on that pickle, grinning with both eyes and lips. “She sounds like a really interesting person, maybe you could help me out a bit with her.”

Neither of them knew how her hand ended up moving over his, nor how the fingers of his other hand ended up touching her cheek. All Lyudmyla knew was that she ended up staying much longer than she had planned to — and she didn’t regret it at all.

*

When she woke up the next day, she had her head squished into the pillow and it took her disoriented brain a full five minutes to pick up the light snoring coming from next to her. There wasn’t much she remembered about the night before — Sanya had driven her to that club before heading to his own date, and then Dominic had tried his puppy dog eyes on her. She _did_ remember making out in the restroom with Elias, though, and she found herself suppressing giggles as that tingling sensation in her lips came back.

Then, the more she woke up, the more her ears seemed to focus on the sound of the person sleeping next to her. When she turned around, she almost expected to find a sleeping Blitz by her side, but it was a relief to be proved wrong, for once, and to be met by Dominic snoring with his face turned towards her, one hand on his chest and the other underneath his pillow.

She stared at him for a long moment, almost in the attempt of memorizing the lines of his face for the umpteenth time. He hadn’t shaved in days, and the stubble he had sported when she came back on Tuesday had grown longer. His expression was peaceful, the expression lines on his face fully relaxed, and she had to resist the impulse of extending a hand out to poke one of his cheeks.

Bringing the night’s events back to memory proved to be a tough thing, hindered by the dull headache pounding inside her skull, but she was fairly sure there had been endless German in the car, and then Marius’ voice wishing her _sweet dreams_ , probably right after he dropped both her and Dominic in the latter’s room. For a moment, as she splashed cold water on her face in her friend’s bathroom, she wondered why and it was only after a quick shower that she realized the reason must have to do with her door pad and a key (or a code) these people didn’t have.

“Such a pretty view when I have such an insisting headache,” was the groggy voice that welcomed her when she walked back into the room, hair still wet and dripping water on the shirt she had worn the night before. “Not that I’m complaining, but what the hell are you doing in my room?” he asked, rubbing his eyes as he tried to shake the sleep off of his system.

She chuckled at him and before she spoke a word, she threw a blister of ibuprofen she had found in the cabinet behind his mirror at him. “I sneaked in here to have fun at the expenses of drunk you, that’s what.” But she walked up to him, took the bottle of water on his bedside table, and opened it to smell if its contents were still any good to be drunk. “Pop a pill, big boy,” she smiled, handing him the bottle. “And when you’re feeling like a bull again, remind me to never come to a party with you again.”

“C’mon, you had fun, I saw you and Eli ‘opening up’,” he snickered, but she was already flipping him off as she left his room.

The mess hall was empty when she crossed it, her objective being the kitchens behind the door at the opposite side from the one she had come in. She could only think of coffee — and then of some more vodka, she wouldn’t say no to that; she just needed Sanya or Tima hiding with their alcohol in the kitchens and she would have a blast of a morning. But when she walked in, it was German the first thing she heard — amused German as someone seemed to be making fun of someone else.

“Hi,” she smiled, stopping in her tracks when she spotted Marius and Elias playing with forks as though they were tiny swords of sorts. “I will only ask if you left any coffee for another hangover person.”

“It’s not what it looks like,” Marius chuckled, massaging the spot where his friend’s fork had hit the back of his hand.

He said something else, but Lyudmyla was back to feeling like a teenager for the first time in a while and she didn’t hear a word. Elias was pouring her a cup of coffee — not as hot anymore by now, but she had had far worse in Russia, so she wouldn’t complain — and she tried to hide a smile at the memory of last night’s kissing. His kisses had been so soft and demanding at the same time, she found herself remembering, and they had giggled against each other’s lips like some school kids at something either of them had said.

“How’re you holding up?” he asked her, fingers brushing against hers when he passed her the mug.

She smirked in amusement, and her eyebrows rose almost comically as she stared into the blue of his eyes. “I’ve had worse,” she confessed. Then, when she turned around, she barely had the time to take in Jäger’s indecipherable expression as he stared at them, that she was talking again. “If you two are in the mood for a late breakfast, I’ve been dying to try out this new place downtown.”

“Count me in!” came Dominic’s booming and unexpected reply as he strode into the room, clothes still crumpled after he had slept in them all night. Then, as she turned around to check in with Elias, came Dom’s whiny _What?_ at the slap Marius gave his arm and that neither of the other two present in the room had the chance to see.

“Unfortunately I’ll have to turn your offer down, Lyuda,” Marius smiled. “I have a device evaluation in a bit that I really can’t postpone. I will say yes to another day, though, if you’ll have me.” Then, when she nodded happily, he went on. “Thank you for coming to the party yesterday, I’m glad we could get to know each other better. Dom was right about you.”

*

Lyudmyla was still thinking about Jäger’s _Dom was right about you_ when they left the diner she had wanted to check out for a good two months now — the verdict: nothing special on the outside, but the food was delicious. She had even met up with Timur after changing her clothes before leaving the Base, but he had turned down her offer as well, adducing something about Sanya and ‘an embarrassing injury’ whose details he hadn’t disclosed.

She tried to understand what those words could be about, what exactly Dominic had told them about her — knowing him, probably a big, smoking pile of bullshit — but she couldn’t come up with anything. A good impression, that’s what she hoped that was: Emmanuelle had thought her to be a bitch before she got to know her better, and all because she didn’t socialize much with the others. She knew she could come off as haughty, but she was anything but with Bandit.

 _Not that I care about what people think of me_ — but the truth was, deep down, she did.

“I’m full like an egg,” Dominic complained, sitting back on the park bench they had called for themselves. Hands on his stomach, Lyuda knew he was puffing it out on purpose to make her laugh, and she was doing her best not to just to see where his attempts would go. “You’re quiet, _Schatzi_. What are you thinking about?”

“What the best way to shut you up is,” intervened Elias, and she found herself absentmindedly chuckling at those words.

Eyes set on two dogs playing with their owner not far from them, she just enjoyed the quiet — or as much of it as she could have with Dominic’s never-ending babbling. For the first time in God knew how long, she was comfortable, sitting there with her best friend and then another guy she didn’t know that well, but that, for one, she found interesting and for two, she had spent the night making out with in some not-so-clean restroom. It was out of the ordinary, but it was a good feeling, one she found herself basking in.

“Or maybe she’s just a bit uncomfortable because you’re here, as well.”

“Oh, eat shit, Nic,” she laughed, just to then lean her head on his shoulder for a moment, before taking one of his hands in hers, a _You know I love you_ chuckled softly against the leather of his jacket. “ _Maybe_ , but it’s just a hypothesis, I’m not that well-rested, since I had to sleep next to a snoring you.”

“I don’t snore.”

“Of course, you do!” and she turned to smile at Elias when they both said it at the same time.

He gaped for a moment before he frowned. “Fine, maybe I do. _A bit_ ,” he groaned. “ _Sometimes_.”

Then, before any of them had the time to drag the joke out a little longer, Dominic’s phone rang and after an insistent call with _Marius, that motherfucker_ , he was forced to leave. It had taken plenty of convincing, or so it had seemed, before Dominic finally stood up with a grunt and complained under his breath. That _Everything’s alright?_ of hers was met by a huff and then a sigh, and eventually by a smile and a nod of the head on her friend’s part, before he patted her cheek twice and said his good-byes.

“Should we follow him?” she asked as she stared at Dominic’s silhouette disappearing behind the cars in the parking lot at the entrance of the park. He seemed to stomp his feet even from that distance, and she wondered what Jäger could have said to make him act like a child.

“Nah, we can go for a walk of our own.”

And before she could reply, he had her hand in his and they were strolling along the pathway, passing by a bunch of kids playing on the slide as their mothers chatted together.

“You know, he really loves you.”

Lost in her thoughts, and in the way Elias’ hand seemed to envelop hers and make it disappear, she hummed, eyebrows furrowed when she turned her head to stare at him.

“Dominic,” he explained. “He’s always bringing you up. We could be doing anything and he would go _Lyuda this_ or _Lyuda that_ ,” he chuckled. “I don’t know what you’ve done, but you’ve got him wrapped around your finger. He really loves you,” he repeated, just to be met by her laughter.

“Oh no,” she shook her head and inadvertently tugged on his arm as she walked up some steps. “No, we don’t do love. We’re just really good friends, that’s all. I’ll confess that we did some things in the past, but we’re not into each other like that. I have his back no matter what, and he has mine. We fuck around, but we don’t _fuck_ around. He’s the best friend I’ve ever had.” She was grinning, and when she turned around to gaze at him, standing three steps below her, she found him staring at her with a soft smile on his face that almost made her blush. “And don’t tell him, but when he’s drunk and in a particularly good mood, he’ll say I’m his best friend as well. Not a ‘homie’, a ‘best friend’.”

And that made him chuckle. It was a nice sound, and she found herself holding her breath for a couple of seconds as she watched and listened to him. She didn’t do love, but maybe — _just maybe_ — she could do him.

“You’re like his best-kept secret,” he confessed after a while, walking up until he was on her same step before they both proceeded forward. “He’s always babbling and babbling, just like a kid, but if you ask him something, he’s all _Not your business, stay away from her_. I didn’t expect for him to invite you to Marius’ birthday party, but I’m glad he did.”

“I didn’t expect to accept his invitation, either.”

“How did he convince you?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Well, if we’re walking back to the Base, I have quite a bit of free time,” he grinned.

*

It was a week later when it first happened. Her mother would call her names — she’d call her worse things if she knew her daughter had been on her knees with a man down her throat just less than twenty-four hours after getting close to him —, but it didn’t seem to matter when he seemed to be on her same page.

“I fucking hate that bitch,” Lyudmyla groaned out, a moment before Elias managed to tear a moan from her.

He had a skilled mouth — and his fingers felt… like _fucking heaven_ , she wouldn’t lie, but at the same time the night had started on the wrong foot and now she couldn’t zone out and focus on him only. Lain between her legs, he was going down on her like only few ever truly did and although she could feel him — and enjoy the things he did —, she couldn’t erase the noise of the world around them.

His chuckle distracted her, though, and when it became even clearer that she was too worked up over something that had happened, he slowly moved up her body while his right hand kept on lazily fingering her. “What happened, Myla?” he whispered against her neck before peppering kisses over her warm skin. He was the only one that called her that. She was Lyuda or Lyudka; Tima called her _ptichka_ , for he sometimes painted little birds for her, and at home she was Lyudochka. However, Elias called her _Myla_ and although they had truly been in each other’s lives for a little over a week, she loved that already.

But right now, she could feel him against her thigh, through the microfiber of the towel he had wrapped around his hips, and although her blood was boiling in her veins, her body still arched up against him. “That fucking _bitch_ ,” and she gasped when his fingers brushed across a sensitive spot inside her, “thinks she can make salty puns about _me_. Call me —” another gasp — “ _Russian Ice Queen_ just because I— _God_.”

One hand cupped the back of his head, while the fingers of the other gripped his hip and if it weren’t for that towel, he’d have the crescent-moon shapes of her nails marked into his flesh. “‘Just because you’ what?”

But she was too close to her climax to think straight, and that thumb of his toying with her clit didn’t help her cause. Her toes curled and for a split second, as she spat out Monika’s name as though it were venom and added an insult for good measure, the only thing she could think about was tearing both her shirt and her bra off her body and riding Elias into the next morning.

“Myla, you’re too smart to let her get to you.”

He hid his face in the crook of her neck when she came. Her back arched and her fingertips pressed into his flesh, and he suckled on a hickey right on her pulse point until she came down from her high. His damp hair tickled her cheek, but it was the gentle rocking of his hips against her thigh that brought her back to the reality of his room.

When she opened her eyes, a minute later, and made the conscious attempt of trying to calm her panting down, she found him propped up on an elbow gazing down at her. His fingers were still gently circling her clit and, barely aware of the whiny whimpers that fell from her lips, their touches — and the orgasm they had provided — had completely wiped her brain clean.

Her hand came up and although it was still trembling, her grip on the back of his neck was firm when she pulled him down to kiss him. “Fuck me,” she whispered then, lips moving right against his, eyes staring directly into his.

He was so beautiful, she found herself noticing. So beautiful and yet, still rugged around the edges, and the longer she held his gaze, the more she felt herself falling for those eyes of his that always seemed to speak louder than words.

“‘Fuck you’?” he chuckled as he helped her up to sitting and made quick work of removing the clothes that still covered her upper body. “I’m going to make you forget all about Monika and her words for a few hours,” was the groan that followed, quickly followed by that hungry kiss that almost made her eyes roll into her skull as he laid her back down.

Good _God_ , she felt herself burn — _on fire_ probably didn’t even come close to describe the feeling. His hands were insistent on her body as he kissed her sanity away, and he grunted and huffed from his nose when he pushed his hands underneath her buttcheeks and pressed himself against her.

She gasped when she felt him nudged against her throbbing core, through his towel, and her hips bucked up against his. Breathless, deafened by the pounding of her heart in her ears, she couldn’t hear the lewd things he was groaning against her skin as he kissed her neck, and then down her collarbones and between her breasts before he pushed up on his knees again. Her eyes remained fixed on his, for she knew that if she let her gaze wander lower down, she wouldn’t be able to be as still as he wanted her.

“But first I’m going to make you come,” he smirked, making her move up the bed a bit as he lay down on his stomach between her legs. “ _Again_.”

The whine that came up her throat when he licked up between her folds made her skin tingle, but it was that groan of his as she tugged on his hair that made her moan.

Lyudmyla had always been used to quickies more than anything else — a quick fuck in the common showers after training, or in the back of a truck, or behind one of the buildings back at the base in Stepnoy. And she had never minded, not even once, because while the time spent off-mission could get boring at times, there was always something to do. But the sounds that left Elias’ lips… _Bozhe_ , she would go insane in his room, doing any kind of stuff with him, really, because his grunts and his moans — _God_ , his _whines_ of pleasure — tugged at her skin and at her heart, at her fucking _core_ , and she could never seem to get enough of him.

He made sure to moan against her every time he went down on her — eleven times in the past seven days, two of which only that night — and really, it was as though he _knew_ the effect he had on her, how much more quickly pleasure crept up on her when he was vocal. Two of his fingers pushed into her at once, then, and as she tugged almost a bit too harshly on his hair again, his eyes peered up at her and she read his smirk in them more than she felt it around her clit.

Her thighs tensed, and she huffed out a _fuck_ when her head fell back and her sight set on the ceiling of his room. _Fuck_ — she _desperately_ wanted to be loud for once, because those two fingers of his curling up inside her and brushing against all the right spots made her insides twist and knot, her breathing grow quicker and labored. And before she knew she was close, her thighs tensed on the sides of his head and her back arched almost painfully as she came again, this time a bit more intensely, as her system seemed to reboot and the air got trapped in her lungs.

Lyudmyla _did_ have men between the moment she and Dominic had stopped going down on each other and the moment she had found herself on his knees with Elias’ cock in her mouth, last Sunday, and during that year time in-between, she had considered her best friend to be the best oral she had ever had — and that she would probably have. But as she tried to slow down her heart, close as it was to going off inside her chest, and to even out that same breathing she had lost all control over, she found herself thinking that nobody even came close to this man that had managed to make her open up like no other.

“You still with me?” he mumbled against her breasts, before he took a nipple in his mouth and suckled gently, tearing yet another moan from her. She almost twitched when he patted her clit once to grab her attention, and the chuckle he let out made her skin crawl as she whined, eyes still closed shut. “ _Myla_ ,” was the hum that followed, and the way he drawled out the first syllable made her smile and exhale loudly from her nose as she tried not to giggle.

“Yeah,” she panted, hands coming up blindly in search of his sides. “ _Yeah_.”

“I’m going to go down on you again,” he said, and the seriousness in his voice made her eyes blink open all of a sudden. His upper lip was glistening in the warm light of the lamps on either side of his bed, and she found that if only she had the strength to, she would prop herself up on her elbows and lick her juices off of it. “That’s right,” he smirked when he realized he had her full attention. “I’m going to eat this pussy out again,” and he punctuated his intentions by moving an arm back between their bodies and tracing her opening with his calloused fingers. “And then —” he kissed her — “I’m going to fuck you into this mattress.” The heel of his hand pressed against her clit and she gasped. “Is that alright with you?”

He’d stop if she said no — she could read it in his eyes, behind the firm tone of his voice. They had never talked about boundaries and invalicable limits: things weren’t serious between them despite the considerable amount of time they had spent between each other’s legs in the past few days. But as she looked up in his eyes, she knew that was how things would go.

“That’s very tempting,” she answered honestly, but she also felt that if he were to go down on her _again_ , right now, she would break in the best way and she’d never be able to leave his room before someone — Dominic or Tima — went looking for her. “But,” and she tugged at his towel so that it would come loose and she could throw it to her left and discard it once and for all, “I want this.”

He was hard in her hand, and the protruding vein on his underside called for her thumb.

“Please.”

His smirk turned into a grin and then into a chuckle, and his head bowed down until he could playfully nip at the tender skin of her neck. “How do you want it?” he asked; his hips unexpectedly bucked in her hand and she gasped out a moan. “Slow and sensual?” He kissed the side of her breast. “Or fast and hard?”

Lyudmyla swore she could feel her heartbeat everywhere in her body, deafening her again, making her breathe out burning hot hair from her nostrils as she stared up at him and thought of all the ways she wanted to have this man. “Fast and hard,” she panted out. “I don’t want to feel anything else.”

He pulled up on his knees, and the smirk was back on his lips when he reached out for the bedside table to her right to fetch a condom from a drawer. “How are we doing this?” he asked as he rolled the latex down on his erection, not once taking his eyes off of her, intent as she was, staring at his hand wrapped around his cock. “No strings attached?”

“No strings attached,” she whispered back, spreading her legs for him as one of her hands reached down between them. And while ‘no feelings attached’ sounded just fine at the moment, with time she would find out that that suit would grow too tight on her.

*

She had been assigned to a five-week mission — the duration could change depending on how things would go, of course, but by the looks of it, it was clear to all of them that it would be time consuming any way it went. If anything, she had worked with Bandit and Tachanka more times than she could recall, and she had trained plenty of time with Maestro, during simulations. The fact that Blitz was the only attacker had unsettled him at first, even though the one they would be leaving for very soon was a defensive mission, but she had seen Lady double as an attacker had partially eased his doubts — _jack-of-all-trades-style_ , the Italian used to say.

“There are men here ready to get us in,” Bandit was saying, pointing at a point in the map that looked like the perfect place to fall into a trap. _That_ was the unsettling thing, walking at the bottom of a canyon with people up there that could shoot them like targets at a funfair. “We all know how to kill, our positions in the organization are merely a formality.”

“If we follow this plan, though, we’ll be in the open. This Trojan horse mode won’t work. It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Blitz clarified, “it’s just that I’d rather us be more than just five.”

Lyudmyla sat back against her chair, tired out of her mind after the round after round of simulations they had just come out of. “We’d all like that,” she sighed. “I’d rather be in the belly of a carcass than do this undercover bullshit,” and she answered to Sanya’s glare with a glare of her own. “But this is easier than it may seem, you just have to play the part. Being a mercenary isn’t that hard: there’s always someone out there ready to pay for you, just as there’s always someone out there ready to be bought. RAINBOW has money to throw into this plan, and we have the expertise these people are looking to buy. We go, we play whores, and if anything goes wrong, we have our green card out.”

“What you seem to forget,” Elias rebutted, “is that we’re not mercenaries.”

She exchanged a look with Alexsandr, who tried to suppress a smirk at the other end of the table with the holographic plan of the map, and then turned towards Dominic. “Bandit worked undercover. Tachanka took part in some… sketchy missions in Russia, I’d dare say. My brigade has done things, as well. If there’s one thing Spetsnaz selections taught me, is that even those who look incorruptible bend the knee in front of the prospect of money.”

“The lady is right,” Adriano intervened.

“Watch your mouth, M,” she glared, but there was a smile on both of their lips.

“I mean it with the utmost respect, _tesoro_.” He turned back to Elias, then. “We’d still be doing our job, just… on the other side of the barricade. These people don’t know what RAINBOW agents look like. In their eyes we,” and he pointed his gaze on each of them, “are just more men they can use. They’ll have no reason to have doubts about us if we are the ones bringing in the Governor with handcuffs on his wrists and a gun pointed at his head. Then, when they’re dead or in shackles, we’ll take the Gov back out and to safety. Easy peasy.”

Lyudmyla was still thinking about Adriano’s words two hours later, when she left the training gym smelling like the body wash she had stolen from Sanya. She still had no idea how Six had managed to convince the Governor to play this scheme, nor what strings he had moved to even come up with the plan in the first place. And as she walked towards the firing range, shielded by the late-April rain, she decided she didn’t want to know. She was there to do her job, not to ask questions. She had committed the mistake of asking _Volkov_ questions, the first time her Commander had sold her services as part of a mission, and she had learned not to fall for the same mistake again.

The shooting range was loud when the door closed itself behind her back. Shots ricocheted off the walls, although deadened by the partitioning wall that separated the actual range from the corridor of the control booth that led down to the armory.

She wanted to see Elias eye to eye — to talk and maybe do something else before they left the next morning before sunrise. She knew from experience what too many worries before a life-or-death-situation kind of mission could do, the breaches they could open. Her unit had lost two of theirs during her first year as a purely Spetsnaz agent, and four had risked losing a limb or something more, she included. So if there was anything she could do to ease his mind, she was ready to do it.

Elias was standing in booth number three — his lucky number, or so Dom had told her once, when she had asked him why his friend always booked the same one. The Brits were recharging their weapons in their booths at the far left end of the range, and Sanya sent her a smirk from his position at number one before he hung a new target sheet on the target carrier.

She leaned on the partition that separated booths three and four, though, and smiled when the German turned his head towards her. His expression was unreadable, but she almost had the impression that part of the tension he still carried inside eased at the sight of her.

“Wait for me in the control booth,” he told her as he pressed the call button for his target holder. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

A nod of her head, and then she was gone without a word. She waited for him as he had asked her to, and in the meantime, she tried to come up with comforting things to tell him. But no matter how hard she thought, she couldn’t come up with a single thing that wasn’t _it’s all going to be okay_. She knew they’d come back alive — probably not completely unscathed, but that risk came with the job. She just wished he could see it the same way.

Lost in her thoughts, she jolted when someone touched her shoulder and when she whipped around, she let out a breathy chuckle when she saw it was just him.

“Look, I didn’t want to offend any of you before,” he started before she had the chance to open her mouth. “And I trust all of you. You’re the only one I’ve never worked with before, but Dominic has and he’s only ever spoken highly of you, on or off the field.”

“I’m not here to tell you off,” she replied as she followed him towards the armory. She had already been in the Germans’ sector, but out of respect she still turned her head the other way when he punched in the code to unlock the door. “I came to tell you that it’s all going to be okay but…”

They both chuckled and he sat down on one of the benches when he put his electronic head muffs in his locker.

“Yeah, I know, not exactly the right job for those words.”

She smiled, hands placed on either side of his face as she stood between his legs. “I had a friend in Stepnoy that used to say that those words bad luck,” she snorted. “I don’t believe in bad luck, but I still can’t bring myself to say them.”

He mirrored his smile, and as she watched his lips stretch sweetly, he seemed to finally fully relax. But before he could say anything, her eyes went as wide as those of a kid in a candy shop.

“Oh my _God_!” she squealed. “Is that your shield?”

Her hands turned his head to the side to prompt him to turn around. He had used a normal shield during their simulations as a way not to blind his colleagues, but she had wished to actually see it with her own two eyes ever since she joined the team two years ago.

His laughter seemed to ring in the closed space when he nodded his head yes. “You can touch it if you want.”

And what had come out as an accidental double meaning turned into some form of lewd foreplay as they sat there, talking about anything and nothing at the same time. Elias always had some pun on the tip of his tongue and was always a pleasure to listen to.

Some time later, as her hand had almost moved over the crotch of his pants to unzip the fly and his had been between her panties and the crotch of her joggers, the Brits walked loudly in and they barely had the time to resume a less compromising position that they passed by their box. A few more minutes and when they walked back, Mike popped his head in. A _You’re the last ones here, lock the door when you leave_ later and he was gone, his heavy footfalls echoing in the armory as he ran after his friends.

“I had an idea before they walked in,” Elias muttered, eyes still trained on where Thatcher’s head had been mere seconds before. When he turned around, he had a telling smirk on his face and really, she didn’t need to hear it, but she wanted him to be dirty and say it out loud.

“What kind of idea?”

“The one where I fuck you against one of these walls.”

And just like that, his hands were on her hips, tugging her forward from where she was sitting straddling the bench to right between his legs, her thighs made to rest directly over his.

“And I want you to be loud,” he groaned, head coming down so that he could nip the skin in the crook of her neck. “To be as loud as you want before we leave in less than twelve hours.”

She laughed, and before she knew it, they were both standing up and he was tugging her pants and underwear down her legs as soon as she had taken her shoes off. Then, she was in his arms, legs wrapped tightly around his hips as he walked her towards the wall, coming to a stop right next to his shield, still facing the door from where she had left it. Then, he kissed her.

And right then, the undeniable truth was, Elias Kötz was a damn good kisser, and she had spent the last almost two months learning just that. _No strings attached_ he had said — but he cradled her face in his hands and kissed her breath away every time and while yeah, she could definitely do casual, she always found herself looking forward to the moments she spent with him. 

When his lips skimmed along her jaw and went back down to her neck, as a way for both of them to catch their breath, one of his hands moved between her legs and she let out a long moan, deep in her throat.

“What got you so wet?” he hummed, breathing hard against her cheek. “My shield? Or my puns?”

She huffed a laughter. “What else did you expect when you started casually telling me all the things you wanted to do to me?” He let her pull his head back, her fingers tangled in his hair, and the kiss that followed muffled the moan his fingers pushing into her elicited.

“So you like it?” he asked when he pulled back and her hands were finally unzipping his pants and taking his erection out of his briefs. “When I say I want to take you in the armory?”

He was inside her in a heartbeat. Her neck arched, and her head fell back against the wall at the sudden sensation of fullness that tore a whimper from her very soul.

“Or when I say how tight you always are around me?”

He thrust up again, hands moving to her buttcheeks to keep her as close to him as he could.

“Tight and warm,” he groaned. “Always so wet, I can never stop thinking about you, _lyubimaya_.”

She panted his name, neither of them fully aware of the way he had just called her. Her hands were on either side of his neck and she did try keeping her eyes open and locked with his, but the drag of his dick inside her was making her see stars as he stretched her open.

“When we come back,” she breathed, “we’re gonna do it nice and slow.”

“We can do it any way you want, Myla,” he breathlessly chuckled as she felt him start twitching.

He was pushing her up the hill that would take her to her orgasm and as she fulfilled his wish for her to be loud and dragged him with her towards his finish, only Elias heard the sound of heavy steps coming their way.

“Keep your eyes closed,” he moaned in her ear when she squeezed down on him and one of his hands came up to her eyes.

The flash went off right when she reached her orgasm and blinded by pleasure as she was, her mind barely able to process the fact that he was still thrusting up into her, his movements now curt and sloppy, she didn’t even notice he had activated his shield, nor did she hear the plaintive groan of Alexsandr getting blinded.

A few moments later, when the intruder had left the armory, Elias grunted his release against her lips as she held his face between her hands. His came to plant themselves firmly on the wall on either side of her head and the hold of her legs on his waist tightened, and as she automatically contracted around him, they both moaned in unison.

They stayed in that position for a few minutes as they both tried to catch their breath, their hearts still beating wildly against each other’s chest. Then, he laughed — a hearty laughter that made her chuckle for a moment before she simply rested there, a satisfied smile on her lips as she cradled this wild man’s face in her hands.

“What are you laughing at?” she asked, voice faint and still breathy.

“Someone will think twice next time before sneaking up on Blitz having sex next to his shield,” he snickered.

“Someone saw us?”

“The only thing we flashed them was my shield, don’t worry.”

He pecked her lips and stared at her in content silence for a moment longer before he pulled out slowly. When she hissed, he pecked her lips again.

“I want to take you somewhere nice when we come back,” he said when they left the building where both firing range and armory were. He had an arm thrown around her shoulders and she was pressed into his side as she tried to keep both shielded under the umbrella.

She moved her head against her shoulder and looked up at him. “Yeah?”

He hummed in response. “We could go climbing. Marius has told me of a place. It’s a trail for experienced hikers, but the view at the end is a nice and secluded place.” Then, his smirk was back on his lips and his next words made her chuckle before she pushed him under the rain. “You could climb me when we get there.”


End file.
